[lit-ideas] Re: Life or death
- From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 02:43:13 EDT
Ah, Irene. And who said idealism was the flip side of cynicism Janus-like?
When you do perfect parenting, do give us the secrets. We're all a flutter
to know.
For what it's not worth, I agree re. people no longer living naturally, the
way we were meant to. But given today's societal givens, it seems moot to
argue the point.
Julie Krueger
worshipping the sun-god in a swimsuit (wanna talk melanoma?)
========Original Message========
Subj: [lit-ideas] Re: Life or death Date: 4/4/2007 11:25:39 P.M. Central
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-----Original Message-----
From: Carol Kirschenbaum
Sent: Apr 4, 2007 3:20 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Life or death
Irene wrote:
"Children do need more care, with immunizations, ear infections and the
like, but there's little excuse for most adults. "
ck: Huh? Are you serious? "Little excuse" for what--for getting sick?
A.A. Define sick. Colds, i.e., viruses, are not treatable by modern
medicine. Antibiotics treat what they treat. What you're referring to as
sick are
the degenerative diseases, i.e., diabetes, diverticulosis/diverticulitis,
heart disease, cancer, stuff like that. Those are virtually completely
preventable. There is no reason for anyone in this country to have a
degenerative
disease, yet degenerative diseases are rampant.
C.K. The administration ("conservatives") would have us all believe that
everyone would be fine in this country if we only ate less and exercised.
A.A. I haven't heard them say this, but if they're saying it, they're right.
If we ate a lot less and a lot different, i.e., ate the way the body was
designed by evolution to eat, and exercised a lot more, things would be very
different. Even a 5% reduction in weight results in something like a 50%
reduction in the amount of insulin needed. The body is a machine. Treat your
machines right and they'll treat you right. If you put diesel into a gasoline
car, it wouldn't be long before it stalled on you. Who would you blame?
That's exactly what's happening to people.
C.K. Obesity as the new Black Death,
A.A. Absolutely. Obese people even survive serious car accidents in
smaller numbers than normal weight people.
C.K. the omnipotent cause that's All Our Fault.
A.A. And whose fault is being overfed and undernourished? You want the
government to exercise for you?
C.K. This media campaign (which you've bought into, apparently)
A.A. I don't know what you're referring to. Health care is basically
ignored by the administration. I've never seen anything for or against
healthcare
in my reading.
C.K. is actually shoddy excuse for a genuine health care system.
A.A. Actually, you've got it backwards. A genuine health care system is a
shoddy excuse for keeping the body running properly. We need healthcare for
what healthcare is designed to do, i.e., set bones, give antibiotics. It's
not going to make up for bad genes and in no way will it even come close to
making up for properly maintaining the body through proper nutrition and
exercise.
C.K. Not that obesity is good, or that it doesn't cause some problems, but
low weight does not obviate the need for medical treatment, of course.
A.A. Obesity is, quite literally, death. There is no medical care that can
undo it for longer than temporarily. Caloric restriction and low weight do
in fact often, if not usually, obviate the need for medical treatment. They
actually keeps the body biologically younger than more generously nourished
counterparts. Exercise too. Use or lose it.
C.K. I referred to my asthmatic friend in her 50s specifically because she
represented, if you will, a classic case.
A.A. Asthma is a strange disease. Your friend needs to figure out what's
triggering her. Often asthma is a way of somatizing emotional problems. Our
bodies speak to us if we'd listen. Is you friend feeling smothered by
something in her life? A crummy job, a bad relationship? Does she have a lot
of
unexpressed anger (which she's not aware of, most likely from childhood) that
her body is telling to deal with? Or does she have allergies? There's also a
lot of evidence that Vitamin D (in much, much higher quantities than is
currently recommended) is a powerful anti-inflammatory. Asthma is caused by
inflamed airways. Vitamin D (misnamed a vitamin, it's actually a hormone
produced in the skin by the sun) is found in every cell of the body. We
evolved in
the sun but spend our time in offices, which is to say we're very deficient
in it. Vitamin D is associated with reduced rates of absolutely everything,
from osteoporosis to multiple sclerosis (unknown on the equator), to
Parkinson's disease to allergies to you name it. Modern people are very
undersupplied
with this critical substance. In fact, they think now that the reason that
isolating people with tuberculosis in sanatoriums worked is because they
would sit them in the sun and the Vitamin D that was produced allowed the
immune
system to function properly and heal the person. The point is, just
medicating asthma without finding out the cause is good for the pharmaceutical
industry, not for your friend in the long run. Most likely she'll have to do
her
own sleuthing.
C.K. She worked throughout her hard life, paycheck to paycheck. A host of
rotten diseases tend to hit people in their 40s and 50s, often due to medical
neglect. (Caught early, many diseases are easily managed, medically and by
lifestyle. Later, they're costly and disabling, like severe asthma.)
A.A. Again, it isn't medical neglect, it's a lifetime of dietary neglect,
emotional neglect, etc. We don't live the way we were designed to live, not
even close, so we get sick.
C.K. Irene scoffed at gaining a mere six years of life from advanced
medical treatment.
A.A. He spent six years in cancer treatment, surgery, chemo, radiation and
it spread anyway. Not my idea of quality of life.
C.K. What about the increased quality of life before death, from years of
regular medical care?
A.A. Again, not from medical care, never from medical care, but from self
care.
C.K. What about treatment that allows someone to work--mental illnesses
come to mind--versus no treatment, that lands a poor soul on the street,
babbling to herself?
A.A. Now we agree. We need to put tremendous emphasis on mental health.
The mind is expressed in the body. And we need to teach parenting so that
mental issues aren't built into the picture from the beginning.
C.K. And what about this "basic screening" for colon cancer and breast
cancer, among others? Catch a tumor early and it's not necessarily
a cancer. But uninsured, working poor people wait until they can afford the
treatment (which is EXPENSIVE--meaning, a huge chunk of what's left when you
work at Wal-Mart).
A.A. Well, that's where Dr. Hadler will take issue with you. Tumors caught
early are easier to treat. The problem is that all the quality studies show
(according to Dr. Hadler) that testing doesn't extend life by any
appreciable amount.
C.K. ... No dental care.
A.A. That does need to be provided.
C.K. Free meds from those philanthropic pharmaceutical companies, for a
while.
A.A. Oxymoron, philanthropic pharmaceutical companies. They hook even
children on all sorts of drugs. They're out for themselves. Plus reliance on
pills is a distraction away from the real issues of, among other things,
proper
nutrition and exercise.
C.K. It doesn't take a genius to figure out how the lack of health care
factors into a deep spiral of joblessness and poverty. Take teeth! The sole
dental care for Medicaid patients (in this region) is teeth pulling. No
fixing,
just pulling. Same for the uninsured--and here's where age tends to be a
tipping factor. Ever notice the toothlessness among homeless people, for
instance?
Before those teeth were pulled, somehow, there was pain. Maybe abscesses
(commonly leads to sepsis and death, unbeknownst to most of us). So that
person
with rather unsightly teeth has been ill. Now he's got no front teeth. (If
the back teeth are gone, he's probably got serious digestive problems.) A
person with bad or missing teeth is less attractive than others, and less
likely
to land that job offering benefits. Less health care when needed. Less and
less time spent working vs suffering in pain, as stamina decreases. Get the
picture?
A.A. I said dental needs to be provided, and emotional health. Jobs too
are a huge problem. We could generate wonderful jobs just cleaning up the
environment. Instead we concentrate on McMonster houses and other nonsense.
Our
values are completely screwed up. Regarding mental health services, I
daresay that 98% of everybody will say there's nothing wrong with them
emotionally
and they won't go for treatment even if it was available. I think rather
than get so excited about healthcare, we need to make fundamental structural
changes in eliminating fast food as we know it, subsidizing fruits and
vegetables instead of corn fed meat products, giving incentives for exercise
and not
smoking, teaching parenting, even licensing people before they take up
raising little humans. Then not only will healthcare become a minor issue but
the
prisons would empty out, gangs would no longer be necessary and on and on.
But the way things are now, that's pie in the sky, pure fantasy.
Just a fun fact. The USDA spends something like five million dollars a year
(don't hold me to that number, but it's very low) advertising its 5 a Day
for Health, while the food industry spends in the billions advertising all the
greasy, sleezy stuff that they sell that people think is delicious. About
10-15 years ago restaurant meals were in the range of 1,000 calories and health
authorities were warning that it was too much; today restaurant meals are in
the range of 2,000 calories and up, none of it in the form of vegetables.
Home portion sizes follow suit. There's no amount of healthcare that will
offset that.
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